Reading Francis

People come before projects, and not just alphabetically.

Abandoning Temples is really about learning to put things in the right order, which is ironic, because writing and publishing this book has required me to fight the temptation to put this project ahead of the people in my life.

I am a “get stuff done” type of person. If there is a challenge to address or an opportunity to seize, I’m eager to develop a plan of attack and then execute it. That’s a useful outlook, to a point.

But it’s easy to let that mindset crowd out more important things. Whether it’s producing a book or some other project, once I put my mind to it, I tend to develop tunnel vision about it, committing most waking moments (and many ones when I should be sleeping) to checking things off the to-do list and moving the train closer to the station. 

We’re here, though, for love, not accomplishment.

So a struggle that shows up in the book has been the same struggle I’ve had in making this book: keeping first things first. God, people, and projects like Abandoning Temples deserve my time and attention, but only in that order.